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Now that the University of Missouri’s president has resigned and the chancellor has announced that he’ll step down at the end of the year, hopefully students’ concerns will be addressed. Of all Concerned Student 1950’s list of demands, there is one that particularly impressed me because of its urgency in requiring a plan of action:

A letter to all Members of Congress from more than 50 organizations expressing strong opposition to any appropriations rider that would block or delay implementation of the gainful employment regulation.

When I was a high school senior (many moons ago), I thought I was well-equipped to make the best college choice for me. I had read the brochures (Google wasn’t a thing back then); talked with my school counselor as well as friends and family; and visited campuses to check things out in person. After doing all of that and receiving acceptance letters and financial aid packages, I made a decision...

The U.S. Department of Education plans to release its final "gainful employment" rule in October 2014. The draft rule, circulated by the department earlier this year, proposed cutting off access to federal financial aid for career-education programs (many of which are at for-profit colleges) whose graduates have high student loan default rates or high levels of student loan debt relative to their incomes. It is essential that the department adopt a final rule with strong protections for students.

During the month of May we asked students to submit their stories as public comments on the department’s draft “gainful employment” rule. Many of the student victims who have been exploited and defrauded by career-education programs offered compelling evidence of the need for stronger protections. Here’s what some of them had to say:

Recently, UChicago has shown an increased commitment to recruiting low-income students through initiatives such as QuestBridge and UChicago Promise. Fifty-one students in the Class of 2018 received full four-year scholarships through QuestBridge, the highest among all 35 partner colleges; 73 students in the Class of 2017 benefited from UChicago Promise, which includes a guarantee of no loans for Chicago residents who attended Chicago high schools and are admitted to the College.

All these initiatives are great, but what happens after these students arrive on campus? Many of them are also first-generation, meaning they are the first in their families to attend college.

Being a low-income, first-generation college student can be like jumping into a pool without knowing how to swim. As the daughter of immigrants with no college graduates in my family, I didn’t have a good idea of what to do once I was here. I didn’t know how to ask professors or TAs for help or how to pick the right classes. Everything was foreign to me.

Every year, 65,000 undocumented students who have lived in the United States for at least five years graduate from high school. Only 5-10 percent of them, though, go on to college; the majority of these students either give up on their dreams or put them on hold because they are denied the opportunities for an affordable higher education.

This week, a bipartisan organization launched TheDream.US, a $25 billion scholarship fund that will provide full tuition for 1,000 undocumented students nationwide. Currently, because of their status, they are ineligible for federal financial aid (meaning no Pell Grants or low-interest loans), so this will help draw the bridge to college for many.